Overview

Project Based Learning (PBL) is a teaching method in which students learn by actively engaging in real-world and personally meaningful projects. Students work on a project over an extended period of time – from a week up to a semester – that engages them in solving a real-world problem or answering a complex question. They demonstrate their knowledge and skills by creating a public product or presentation for a real audience.

As a result, students develop deep content knowledge as well as critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and communication skills. Project Based Learning unleashes contagious, creative energy among students and teachers.

Electronic components are categorized as active or passive depending on the functions they are able to perform. In a nutshell, active components can, generally speaking, inject power into a circuit and are capable of electrically controlling and amplifying the flow of electrical current, whereas passive components cannot.

While their superficial differences are easy to articulate, active and passive components tap into a more fundamental premise of electronics design: the conservation of energy. Because energy cannot be created or destroyed, and real-world machines cannot operate at 100% efficiency, all real-world passive circuits will lose some amount of power in use. We witness this net loss through the decline in power between the input and output signals and a decrease in amplification.

In practical terms, active components are useful because they often enable a small amount of electricity to control a larger quantity. In other words, one of the major benefits of active devices like transistors, tunnel diodes, and vacuum tubes is that they allow amplification. Whether they influence the flow of electricity by using voltage or current as the control, active components allow a small input to generate a matching, larger output.

Active components such as amplifiers, vacuum tubes, and transistors make use of an external power source to add power to a system. They use one electrical signal to control another and are required for the circuit to be considered “electronic.” Technically, we don’t define circuits without active components as “electronics,” but in practice, virtually all electronic circuits have passive components as well. Passive components like resistors, inductors, and capacitors influence the flow of power but do not require an external power source to function.